PASE

Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
The IASEMS Graduate Conference at the British Institute of Florence

Call for Papers

“True Originall Copies”?
400 YEARS FROM THE FIRST FOLIO

Florence, 22 April 2022

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: SONIA MASSAI (King’s College London) and RORY LOUGHNANE (University of Kent)

The 2022 IASEMS Graduate Conference at The British Institute in Florence is a one-day interdisciplinary and bilingual English-Italian forum open to PhD students and researchers who have obtained their doctorate within the past 5 years.

This year’s conference will provide an opportunity to lead up to the approaching worldwide 400th Anniversary celebrations of the First Folio. Selected papers will be published in the proceedings edited by our keynote speakers, proff. Rory Loughnane and Sonia Massai, in time to join the 2023 celebrations.

Drawing on recent research (see Rasmussen, 2017; Smith, 2017; Jowett, 2017; Watts, 2015; Rasmussen and West, 2012; West, 2013; Massai 2007, 2013; Loughnane and Power, eds, 2013, 2020; West and Proudfoot, 2003; Werstine 2003), the conference will seek to illuminate the literary, linguistic, and cultural significance of the First Folio, considered in its multifaceted textual dimension but also as a popular culture phenomenon. We welcome papers adopting a variety of approaches to topics that include, but are not limited to, the following:

⎯ First Folio as cultural object
⎯ First Folio as ‘true copy’ and its relations with other Shakespearean texts ⎯ Authority
⎯ Provenance
⎯ Text layout, act and scene divisions, paratextual materials
⎯ Preservation, conservation and book collection
⎯ Textual reception

⎯  Literary, linguistic and cultural representations IN and OF the Folio (in other texts, in films, popular media etc.)

⎯  The First Folio and original spelling and pronunciation

⎯  Editing Folio texts

⎯  The cultural significance of Shakespearean celebrations and anniversaries

⎯  The status of the First Folio through history (including celebrations held in different historical periods)

⎯  Issues of genre

⎯  Canon and apocrypha, expanding the canon, authorship

⎯  Questions of performance

Candidates are invited to send a description of their proposed contribution according to the following guidelines:
– the candidate should provide name, institution, contact info, title and a short abstract of the proposed contribution (300 words for a maximum 20-minute paper), explaining the content and intended structure of the paper; please include both a short bibliography and a short biographical note;

– abstracts are to be submitted by Tuesday 31 December 2021 by email to iolanda.plescia@uniroma1.it and lucabaratta85@gmail.com;
– notification of acceptance will be sent by Friday 21 January 2022;
– each finished contribution should not exceed 20 minutes and is to be presented in English (an exception will be made for Italian candidates of departments other than English, who can give their papers in Italian);

– participants will be asked to present a final draft of the paper ten days before the Conference. Speakers who are IASEMS members can apply for a mini-grant to go towards travel expenses:

(http://www.iasems.org/?page_id=2).

For further information please contact Luca Baratta: (lucabaratta85@gmail.com)